Posts Tagged ‘360 degree virtual tours’

Rich Media Attracts Consumer Appeal

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

We came across an interesting article on the internet highlighting the importance of content – herewith is an extract from it….

The survey suggests that consumers are showing an appetite for more interactive visuals in their shopping and purchase paths. Nearly three in five online travelers (59 percent) say 360 degree virtual tours would be “useful” or “very useful” in helping them select a hotel that matches their preferences and expectations, while nearly half (48%) believe a short video showing a property’s features and amenities would be “useful” or “very useful.”

“We know price and location play the most important role in consumer shopping behavior and decision making, but we were particularly intrigued to see that factors such as loyalty programs and hotel brand were rated so far behind visuals in importance by online travelers,” said Paolo Boni, president and CEO of VFM Interactive, which commissioned the study. “With still image and rich media visuals rated so highly on consumers’ importance and usefulness scales for influencing their selection of one hotel over another online, hoteliers should re-evaluate their online presence – particularly how they are being represented through online travel agency sites — to address the lower consumer satisfaction visuals found online today.

Please click here to view the whole article.

Click on the following link to view some of our 360 degree virtual tours that we embedded into Facebook: www.facebook.com/smartguide

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Garden Route Content Update

Monday, February 1st, 2010

SmartGuide recently spent time along the Garden Route gathering information. We took some 360 degree virtual tours (360 degree images) to place on our Interactive Travel Guide courtesy of Virtual Africa’s new distribution platform that allows you to distribute your virtual tours to a wider audience.

Knysna: The Hippo Beach

Plettenberg Bay: The Viewpoint 1

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words well then…

What then is a video with words worth or a virtual worth?

As the Internet becomes a more visual tool and people take a ‘show me don’t tell me’ approach, the use of rich media is becoming more and more important in the competitive online tourism arena.

So don’t hang around – invest in rich content now. And if you do not know where to start contact us and we will give you the options.

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Why use Google Maps when you can use SmartGuide’s Interactive Tourist Guide

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

SmartGuide has spent the last year developing their Online Interactive Travel Guide. Essentially it is Google Maps with additional functionality developed. Some of the functionality built into the maps includes:-

· Rich Media (text, audio, pictures videos and 360 degree virtual tours) can be accessed when you click on the icon

· Local Guides – These guides are geo-located so you are only given advice relevant to the area you are looking at.

· Recommendations – you receive geo located recommendations so you are only recommended relevant recommendations

· Built for Tourism – The guide has been built to cater for tourists and thus has specialized functionality

· Easily Distributed – can be imbedded into your website, emailed or embedded into blogs ensuring it can be distributed widely and cheaply.

· Easily Integrated into your website – quick and cheap to integrate into your website.

· Customizable – the information and content on the map is customizable

· Reskinning – the map can be easily reskinned to reflect your company’s look and feel

The interactive map is being made available to the tourism industry, if you are interested in using it to help secure and convert customers contact SmartGuide (www.smartguide.co.za) – why use Google Maps when you can use SmartGuide version the with additional functionality and embedded rich media? To see how the go to:-

How the map works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXEiYla_rA0&feature=player_embedded

Personalised map: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7qgUabtUY&feature=player_embedded

Click here to view the interactive map of Hermanus

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Interactive Travel Guide for Southern Africa

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

SmartGuide has developed an online Interactive Travel Guide for South Africa. This guide is built on Google Maps and has 1000s of points of interest, places to stay or eat, activities and more. Each icon placed on the map contains rich content (pictures, podcasts, videos, 360 degree virtual tours, etc) which can be easily accessed. The delivery of content is layered and managed so as not to bombard the tourist with too much information at one time.

This technology has caught the eye of many of the big tourism players within South Africa and hopefully SmartGuide will be able to announce some exciting partnerships in the near future.

This technology is being made available to the tourism industry for free so if you are a Tour Operator, Destination Marketing Organization, Accommodation Broker, Service Provider this technology can be integrated into you website in a matter of minutes.

For a demo of the online Interactive Travel Guide watch the video below.

For more information contact www.SmartGuide.co.za

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